What we learned from the special election in North Carolina's 9th congressional district
These three takeaways are mostly bad for Republicans
When a special election keeps you up past midnight:
The Takeaway: Democrats came very close to winning a special election in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district yesterday. Three things you should know: (1) there are more than thirty GOP-held districts that are potentially more competitive than NC-09 (though the number is less when you factor in incumbency, challenger quality, etc.); (2) The district, with both suburbs and rural areas, is a neat microcosm of trends from 2016 to 2018; and (3) Donald Trump’s re-election strategy contains a hidden danger for the president.
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Yesterday's most-special special election in NC-09 is another data point on the pile indicating a bad, but perhaps not disastrous (especially when compared to the 2018 "wave"), outlook for Republicans in the 2020 elections. I'd like to tell you why.
First, observe that Donald Trump won the district by 12 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election, but Republican Dan Bishop only defeated his Democratic opponent Dan McCready by 2. That’s a swing of ten points. By my count, there are 32 other GOP-occupied congressional seats that Trump won by a smaller margin he did in NC-09—all potential targets for the Democrats' House efforts next year (though by no means am I saying all will flip). But be careful; incumbent representatives often out-perform presidential margins in their districts, and one special election is not a great predictor of national trends. Democrats are probably looking at a pickup of closer to one dozen seats next year, not three.
Second, it appears that the district has mirrored larger national trends of sub/urban areas moving left and rural ones moving right, save one special factor. Take a look at the map below, which shows precinct-level changes in the district's voting patterns in rural Robeson County from 2016 to 2018. The vast majority of it shifted to the right:
Bishop's strength in Robeson County is likely due to his sponsoring a bill that officially recognized and increased state funding for the Lumbee Native Americans who occupies much of the area.
But while Republicans got good news in rural areas, the changes in district-wide voting behavior reveal a shift toward McCready in suburban precincts in Charlotte, a continuation of 2016-to-2018 trends. Needless to say, given that so many Republican-gerrymandered House districts rely heavily upon suburban voters (*ahem* Texas *cough cough*), if the subgroup continues to move to the left, the GOP could suffer disproportionate consequences. I wrote about this dynamic using precinct-level data from MI-11 in a January data-driven piece, "The failure of gerrymandering":
Lastly, allow me to make a more meta political science observation. The table below shows that Bishop expanded upon his margin in every NC-09 county except Mecklenburg (suburban charlotte) and Cumberland (Fayetteville). Fayetteville, of course, is where Donald Trump held a rally on Tuesday to get out the vote for Dan Bishop. But that didn't seem to happen. Cumberland County is doubly special in this second point: It's the only county where turnout increased relative to 2018, as I said on Twitter. See here:
The combination of increased turnout and a hard swing left might suggest that, not only did Donald Trump's rally fail to win over extra (net) voters in the district, but it might have been counterproductive; he may actually have juiced turnout among Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents. If that's true, then his 2020 campaign, which appears to be focused on holding rowdy mega-rallies around the country, might not be doing the president any favors. Of course, we would need evidence from more than one county in one congressional district to say this is the case. Luckily for us, political scientists Andrew Ballard, Hans Hassell and Michael Heseltine have come up with a similar answer. They conclude their paper as such:
President Trump’s endorsements may, therefore, be doing little to elicit engagement from voters on the Republican side, whilst creating a rallying effect around opposing candidates and increasing engagement among Democratic voters. The story then from these findings may be one of presidential backlash rather than presidential coattails.
Trump’s rallies probably hurt, not help, his electoral prospects. That’s a heck of a finding.
So, to sum up the three lessons:
Republicans are playing defense (again) for the 2020 congressional elections—and maybe the presidential contest, too.
Republicans are still suffering a harsh blood-letting in suburban areas of the country. Suburbanites are engaged and seemingly increasingly anti-Trump, though NC-09 is only one datum and the story in Charlotte may not be the story everywhere.
Trump's rallies seem to be hurting, not helping, him. As he continues to campaign across the country, will he just continue to activate his opponents?